Graduation
by Queensmoot
Summary: Harmony struggles to leave high school behind.


**GRADUATION.**  
(_or, three personal canon facts about Harmony Kendall_)

_i._

For the first few months after graduation, Harmony can barely turn a corner in Sunnydale without spotting someone she knew from school. In a small town like Sunnydale it's bound to happen, but those initial moments where they recognise her and frown, they're awkward for Harmony.

Of course, then the fear kicks in and after that it's much worse for them than it is for her, if the screaming and the tears and those last slow beats of their heart are anything to go by. One time Spike tells her there's poetry in it, those last few seconds, and she nods along because it isn't like him to talk like that, or even to say things to her at all and she kind-of likes it, but she doesn't really get it. Poems are _boring_, like songs without music to dance to and with weird words that aren't relevant any more. Blood is like... there isn't anything to compare it to. It's everything. She's the predator; it's how she imagines Cordelia used to feel in school when she could tear a loser in the hallway down with one cutting remark. Harmony rules these kids now the way she never could before. She rules them in a way even Cordelia never could. And she does it every single night.

After a few months though, she stops running into kids from her class so much. At first she thinks it's down to her, she's gotten rid of them _all_ and she's been much too greedy, binging like that and can vampires put on weight? And then it hits her. Most of them have gone off, to college or just somewhere different, somewhere new.

They scraped their way through graduation. They gathered up their charred diplomas and their gowns, ripped and frayed but still mostly intact, and they left high school behind for good.

And Harmony's... still there.

_ii._

Cordelia seems so different, so _happy_ when Harmony comes to visit that she's sure her friend's holding something back - she's landed a role in the next big blockbuster, she's living in Beverly Hills, she's dating some famous actor or other. Maybe happy isn't the right word, but there's something different. It's like she's glowing, she's more solid and in focus but she's floating somewhere off the ground and Harmony can only raise her arms and jump in the air and try in vain to get herself up to Cordelia's level. She can't keep herself up there, and Cordelia isn't trying hard enough to help her.

And this is how Harmony knows deep down even before she walks into the lion's den that she'll turn on her friend. It's like high school really - but hey, killed at graduation, who would expect anything else of her?

The only time she could ever have what Cordelia had was by grabbing at her feet and dragging her back down. The old Cordy would have understood that, but the woman with the crossbow pointed at her just looks on, confused and hurt but mostly just furious.

And Harmony doesn't feel a thing.

It's then that high school ends for her.

_iii._

Harmony walks out of Wolfram and Hart alone, but she does it alive. Well, she doesn't walk out any more dead than she was when she walked in, at least. And not only that, but she has a glowing reference in her hand courtesy of Angel.

Cordelia once told Harmony in high school that she was a sheep – Cordelia was right, but Cordelia's also dead, the kind of dead you don't come back from and Harmony's standing there with a whole eternity ahead of her.

And she's not a sheep anymore, but she's realising it doesn't hurt to wear a little wool anyhow, if the situation calls for it. Cordelia wouldn't, but Cordelia's dead and Harmony stopped following in her wake a while ago. She's not even following in the old Cordy's wake, not these days.

She has her glowing reference and her perky, woolly smile and a set of fangs too if need be, but she's not fully a sheep or a wolf. Tried both, neither worked out well for her – but being kind-of ambiguous seems to pay off. Angel never trusted her, but that just meant he never expected anything of her and he wasn't surprised when she betrayed him. He let her walk out the door because he expected nothing less, and if it worked there why wouldn't it work again?

And there's got to be more than one Evil Incorporated in town, complete with a vacancy for an undead secretary; after all, it is LA.


End file.
